“It’s not how much you pay your employees, its how much they cost you.” When I was working with the Wizard of Ads I would hear him say this from time to time to the clients.
Business owners can easily look at their monthly profit and loss statements and see how much they are spending on labor. Like “Cost of Goods”, it’s one of the main areas we have to control to make a profit. Unfortunately, the paperwork doesn’t tell the whole story. If you recall from the August 6th Memo, number 8 of 15 Belief Marketing Beliefs says: "Referrals and reputation are still the cornerstone to business growth." A big part of your marketing’s success or failure is your customer’s PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
“You are on your way to a doctor’s appointment and have a flat tire. You left your cell phone at home. You can’t call for help or the doc’s office to let them know you are going to be late. You end up being eleven minutes late. You try to explain what why you are late. Your excuses fall on deaf ears and the receptionist firmly lets you know you have missed your appointment and will be charged for it anyway because you didn’t call and let them know you were going to be late like their rules clearly state. You leave irate, in search of a new doctor.”
Why are you upset? The receptionist was doing her job, following the rules.
All of the advertising in the world cannot overcome a bad personal experience. It is very important for you to hire intelligent, sweet, EXTROVERTS to man your front line positions. Extroverts enjoy other people. They actually get their batteries charged by interacting with people.
INTROVERTS are energized by getting alone and getting away from people.
I am not saying an introvert can’t do the job of a receptionist. I am saying it takes much more energy for them to be sweet at the end of a long day dealing with people. It can be very easy for introverts to subconsciously begin looking at your customer’s as the enemy.
The reason this topic is on my mind, is because I have a client who has had one of the finest introvert book keepers doubling as his receptionist. The very personality traits that make her the best book keeper, makes her least qualified to work with the public. An accountant must be a legalist. Numbers are black and white. There are solid rules that cannot even be bent. (Not flexible.)
A person dealing with the public must make exceptions to some rules and ignore a few guidelines all together. A person who deals with the public eight hours a day understands it gets messy sometimes. Many people don’t behave properly and “Stuff Happens!” during every work day that causes change in our course. (Totally flexible.)
For a deeper understanding of how personality types directly affect your business, I recommend the Dr. Nick Grant’s video called Synergistic Co-Workers.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Leadership, His way.
This post is completely directed toward business leaders who are Christ followers. Maybe I can write something in the future for leaders who have no eternal hope. On second thought, just do the best you can with this.
Greg Grimaud and Miles Paludan are two men I have been watching succeed in Godly
leadership. In the past three years Greg has made a shift from an ego-driven life (ask him) to one of Christ-likeness and the big "H" (humility). Over the past two years, Miles Paludan, the successful custom home builder has become Pastor Miles. He has been a humble servant as long as I have known him and in my opinion is nice example of the leader Henry Nouwen describes.
Henry Nouwen writes his reflections on leadership out of his struggle with spiritual burnout. He like so many was about the business of doing more Godly things, than he was being a Godly man. Henry was at the "top" of his career teaching at Harvard and Yale, when he suddenly quit and took a position as chaplain at a home for the mentally handicapped. It was there he wrote an eighty-one page book entitled In The Name of Jesus. The book is about the spiritual lessons he had to learn to retool his heart for leadership. Nouwen describes the lessons in his life as what I would call movements of the Spirit. He says these movements are what must happen in our hearts in order for us to be prepared for expanded dominion.
The first move is from RELEVANCE to PRAYER.
"It's not enough for the leaders of the future to be moral people, well trained, eager to help their fellow humans, and able to respond creatively to the burning issues of their time. All of that is valuable and important, but it is not the heart of Christian leadership. The central question is: Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God's presence, to listen to God's voice, to look at God's beauty, to touch God's incarnate word, and to taste fully God's infinite Goodness?"
The second move is from POPULARITY to MINISTRY. We need to exchange the need to be a hero with a simple desire to serve people.
"The leadership about which Jesus speaks is of a radically different kind from the leadership offered by the world. It is a servant-leadership---in which the leader is a vulnerable servant who needs the people as much as they need him or her.
From this, it is clear that a whole new type of leadership is asked for---a leadership that is not modeled on the power games of the world, but on a servant-leader, Jesus."
The third transition is the move from LEADING to BEING LED. Leadership's temptation is to serve our own ego.
"It is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of power and humility---powerlessness and humility in the spiritual life do not refer to people who have no spine and who let everyone else make decisions for them. They refer to people who are so deeply in love with Jesus that they are ready to follow Him wherever He guides them, always trusting that, with Him, they will find life and find it abundantly."
(see We're All in the Family Business, by Doug Bannister, pages 58-60.)
Business Runs on Relationships, Relationships take Time!
Greg Grimaud and Miles Paludan are two men I have been watching succeed in Godly
leadership. In the past three years Greg has made a shift from an ego-driven life (ask him) to one of Christ-likeness and the big "H" (humility). Over the past two years, Miles Paludan, the successful custom home builder has become Pastor Miles. He has been a humble servant as long as I have known him and in my opinion is nice example of the leader Henry Nouwen describes.Henry Nouwen writes his reflections on leadership out of his struggle with spiritual burnout. He like so many was about the business of doing more Godly things, than he was being a Godly man. Henry was at the "top" of his career teaching at Harvard and Yale, when he suddenly quit and took a position as chaplain at a home for the mentally handicapped. It was there he wrote an eighty-one page book entitled In The Name of Jesus. The book is about the spiritual lessons he had to learn to retool his heart for leadership. Nouwen describes the lessons in his life as what I would call movements of the Spirit. He says these movements are what must happen in our hearts in order for us to be prepared for expanded dominion.
The first move is from RELEVANCE to PRAYER.
"It's not enough for the leaders of the future to be moral people, well trained, eager to help their fellow humans, and able to respond creatively to the burning issues of their time. All of that is valuable and important, but it is not the heart of Christian leadership. The central question is: Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God's presence, to listen to God's voice, to look at God's beauty, to touch God's incarnate word, and to taste fully God's infinite Goodness?"
The second move is from POPULARITY to MINISTRY. We need to exchange the need to be a hero with a simple desire to serve people.
"The leadership about which Jesus speaks is of a radically different kind from the leadership offered by the world. It is a servant-leadership---in which the leader is a vulnerable servant who needs the people as much as they need him or her.
From this, it is clear that a whole new type of leadership is asked for---a leadership that is not modeled on the power games of the world, but on a servant-leader, Jesus."
The third transition is the move from LEADING to BEING LED. Leadership's temptation is to serve our own ego.
"It is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of power and humility---powerlessness and humility in the spiritual life do not refer to people who have no spine and who let everyone else make decisions for them. They refer to people who are so deeply in love with Jesus that they are ready to follow Him wherever He guides them, always trusting that, with Him, they will find life and find it abundantly."
(see We're All in the Family Business, by Doug Bannister, pages 58-60.)
Business Runs on Relationships, Relationships take Time!
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Sam's Rules Rule!
I grew up in southwest Missouri, not very far from Bentonville, Arkansas. When I was a teenager, I was in a Wal-Mart and there was a group of people all excited about a certain visitor who just left. Yes, I missed Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart visiting one of his stores. From what I understand he would drive around the country in his old Ford pick-up and encourage his people personally.
Wal-Mart didn't always have a love/hate relationship with the population. In Sam's day smaller communities were grateful to have a discount store near by. In more recent years the super-centers have been accused of wiping out all of the local small businesses when they settle near a village.
Over the weekend, I visited my parent's who live 20 miles north of Eureka Spring, Arkansas, just north of Roaring River State Park in Missouri. My dad recently visited the Wal-Mart museum in Bentonville. He gave me a brochure he picked up that had Sam Walton's 10 Rules of Business in it printed in about 10 different languages. They are worth reading. They may be worth memorizing.
A few weeks ago I reminded you that everything rises and falls on leadership.
Sam's Rules For Building a Business
RULE 1: COMMIT to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else. I think I overcame every single one of my personal shortcomings by the sheer passion I brought to my work. I don't know if you're born with this kind of passion, or you can learn it. But I do know you need it. If you love your work, you'll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possible can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you - like a fever.
RULE 2: SHARE your profits with all your associates and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations. Remain a corporation and retain control if you like, but behave as a servant leader in a partnership. Encourage your associates to hold a stake in the company. Offer discounted stock, and grant them stock for their retirement. It's the single best thing we ever did.
RULE 3: MOTIVATE your partners. Money and ownership alone aren't enough. Constantly, day by day, think of new and more interesting ways to motivate and challenge your partners. Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score. Make bets with outrageous payoffs. If things get stale, cross-pollinate: have managers switch jobs with one another to stay challenged. Keep everybody guessing as to what your next trick is going to be. Don't become too predictable.
RULE 4: COMMUNICATE everything you possible can to your partners. The more they know, the more they'll understand. The more they understand, the more they'll care. Once they care, there's no stopping them. If you don't trust your associates to know what's going on, they'll know you don't really consider them partners. Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitors.
RULE 5: APPRECIATE everything your associates do for the business. A paycheck and a stock option will buy one kind of loyalty. But all of us like to be told how much somebody appreciates what we do for them. We like to hear it often, and especially when we have done something we're really proud of. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free - and worth a fortune.
RULE 6: CELEBRATE your successes. Find some humor in your failures. Don't take yourself so seriously. Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up. Have fun. Show enthusiasm - always. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. Then make everybody else sing with you. Don't do a hula on Wall Street. It's been done. Think up your own stunt. All of this is more important, and more fun, than you think, and it really fools the competition. "Why should we take those cornballs at Wal-Mart seriously?"
RULE 7: LISTEN to everyone in your company. And figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front lines - the ones who actually talk to costumers - are the only ones who really know what's going on out there. You'd better find out what they know. This really is what total quality is all about. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble up within it, you must listen to what your associates are trying to tell you.
RULE 8: EXCEED your customers' expectations. If you do, they'll come back over and over. Give them what they want - and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Make good on all your mistakes, and don't make excuses - apologize. Stand behind everything you do. The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign. "Satisfaction Guaranteed." They're still up there, and they have made all the difference.
RULE 9: CONTROL your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage. For twenty-five years running- long before Wal-Mart was known as the nations largest retailer- we ranked number one in our industry for the lowest ratio of expenses to sales. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient.
RULE 10: SWIM upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there's a good change you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. But be prepared for a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you you're headed the wrong way. I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything was: a town of less than 50, 000 population cannot support a discount store for very long.
Wal-Mart didn't always have a love/hate relationship with the population. In Sam's day smaller communities were grateful to have a discount store near by. In more recent years the super-centers have been accused of wiping out all of the local small businesses when they settle near a village.
Over the weekend, I visited my parent's who live 20 miles north of Eureka Spring, Arkansas, just north of Roaring River State Park in Missouri. My dad recently visited the Wal-Mart museum in Bentonville. He gave me a brochure he picked up that had Sam Walton's 10 Rules of Business in it printed in about 10 different languages. They are worth reading. They may be worth memorizing.
A few weeks ago I reminded you that everything rises and falls on leadership.
Sam's Rules For Building a Business
RULE 1: COMMIT to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else. I think I overcame every single one of my personal shortcomings by the sheer passion I brought to my work. I don't know if you're born with this kind of passion, or you can learn it. But I do know you need it. If you love your work, you'll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possible can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you - like a fever.
RULE 2: SHARE your profits with all your associates and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations. Remain a corporation and retain control if you like, but behave as a servant leader in a partnership. Encourage your associates to hold a stake in the company. Offer discounted stock, and grant them stock for their retirement. It's the single best thing we ever did.
RULE 3: MOTIVATE your partners. Money and ownership alone aren't enough. Constantly, day by day, think of new and more interesting ways to motivate and challenge your partners. Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score. Make bets with outrageous payoffs. If things get stale, cross-pollinate: have managers switch jobs with one another to stay challenged. Keep everybody guessing as to what your next trick is going to be. Don't become too predictable.
RULE 4: COMMUNICATE everything you possible can to your partners. The more they know, the more they'll understand. The more they understand, the more they'll care. Once they care, there's no stopping them. If you don't trust your associates to know what's going on, they'll know you don't really consider them partners. Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitors.
RULE 5: APPRECIATE everything your associates do for the business. A paycheck and a stock option will buy one kind of loyalty. But all of us like to be told how much somebody appreciates what we do for them. We like to hear it often, and especially when we have done something we're really proud of. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free - and worth a fortune.
RULE 6: CELEBRATE your successes. Find some humor in your failures. Don't take yourself so seriously. Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up. Have fun. Show enthusiasm - always. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. Then make everybody else sing with you. Don't do a hula on Wall Street. It's been done. Think up your own stunt. All of this is more important, and more fun, than you think, and it really fools the competition. "Why should we take those cornballs at Wal-Mart seriously?"
RULE 7: LISTEN to everyone in your company. And figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front lines - the ones who actually talk to costumers - are the only ones who really know what's going on out there. You'd better find out what they know. This really is what total quality is all about. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble up within it, you must listen to what your associates are trying to tell you.
RULE 8: EXCEED your customers' expectations. If you do, they'll come back over and over. Give them what they want - and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Make good on all your mistakes, and don't make excuses - apologize. Stand behind everything you do. The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign. "Satisfaction Guaranteed." They're still up there, and they have made all the difference.
RULE 9: CONTROL your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage. For twenty-five years running- long before Wal-Mart was known as the nations largest retailer- we ranked number one in our industry for the lowest ratio of expenses to sales. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient.
RULE 10: SWIM upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there's a good change you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. But be prepared for a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you you're headed the wrong way. I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything was: a town of less than 50, 000 population cannot support a discount store for very long.
Belief Marketing
(405) 474-0078
P.S. My parents are selling their Bed and Breakfast Home and are moving in order to take better care of my Grandma Ollie and to be closer to the finest grandchildren in the world. If you are interested in moving to the beautiful Ozark Mountains and living near Branson, Table Rock Lake and Eureka Spings, AR, you might want to click here and give'em a call.
(405) 474-0078
P.S. My parents are selling their Bed and Breakfast Home and are moving in order to take better care of my Grandma Ollie and to be closer to the finest grandchildren in the world. If you are interested in moving to the beautiful Ozark Mountains and living near Branson, Table Rock Lake and Eureka Spings, AR, you might want to click here and give'em a call.
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